Antecedentes en el constitucionalismo ecuatoriano:

perspectives by the participants. To elaborate, participants in this research shared how they engaged multicultural education in their classrooms, and what they suggested to promote multicultural education in Islamic schools. Not all of the participants provided rich and in-depth perspectives about how they applied multicultural education in their teaching, but data analysis brought to light important findings.

The results of data analysis revealed that multicultural educational knowledge depends on teachers’ personal and educational backgrounds. In the previous section, it was explained that participants in this research who had graduate degrees in education pointed out that other teachers in their schools were not informed about multicultural education. In addition to that, the findings of this research showed that participants who had experiences and knowledge specific to multicultural education provided more information related to multicultural education in their schools and classrooms. For example, Amira’s interview data analysis showed that the knowledge and experiences she had about multicultural education allowed her to apply multicultural education from a critical perspective. Amira explained how she applied multiculturalism, social justice, and culturally responsive teaching:

Multicultural issues came out in my pedagogy and my content. I taught English, so my approach is different than the approach is taken in public schools. My approach was to give students social awareness and

consciousness so we looked at very controversial issues such like

advertising theory. When I have to teach like argumentation, I would teach it from the point of view that they will gain critical thinking skills. Then

through that how gender is constructed, masculinity, and femininity and we look at some of phobia through comics and political cartoons. All those are creating arguments. So I will teach the concept of "argument" through this very non-traditional ways. And that is still multicultural approach, because we looked at how minority groups are constructed. We looked how African Americans are represented in films, and of course how Muslims are represented in the variety of printed and electronic media. And of course gender. We looked at advertisements in magazines in terms of how women are portrayed, and this was one unit which would be teaching arguments. We also looked at the role of TV in people’s lives we looked at the concept of freedom, immigration. All these are I would say multicultural issues.

Amira elaborated on her thoughts about how her multicultural educational background helped her develop learning environments according to her students’ needs. She explained:

I think it is very important to have educational background because there was so many issues within in the school that needs theory to help you understand what is happening. Let’s take diversity. Obviously I mentioned that there were lots of diversity in the school, and some people may say that you were brown and your students were brown; so you should have easily understood their experiences. However that was not true… Having the background in multiculturalism in education really helped me to navigate that diversity and to understand the students’ responses in the

classroom. For example, gender was a huge issue, because a lot of the girls when they go home if they have siblings, they were cooking, cleaning and doing gendered activities that the boys do not have to. They tell me they were not able to do their homework sometimes because they have to do housework. Just understanding those sides of the students’ lives helped you to understand and approach them in the classroom. This lens that I have acquired or used, I acquired from my educational background. If I did not have that, I would not be able to understand.

Similarly, findings from Amal’s interview showed that Amal had gained multicultural awareness during her Master’s degree which helped her to apply

multicultural education in her classrooms. However she did not provide rich descriptions about how she adjusted multicultural education in her classrooms. In her interview, Amal pointed out that her multicultural educational approach was not very clear; she stated that she preferred to be neutral in discussing sensitive issues in religious education with her students. She described her experiences with 8th graders.

I dealt with mostly with my home room which was eight grade classroom, because I saw them more throughout the day. I was their home room teacher, so they came to me a lot more. I was like their counselor. But I tried to stay again in the middle. Because a lot of students would look up the teachers, you do not want to put too much your views, even your actions. You even have to try not to show your thinking in a certain way because they are old enough to figure out just by the way you dress. They were able to figure out what you think in terms of religion.

As it was mentioned in previous sections, Salma also tried to bring a multicultural educational perspective to her classroom in the Islamic school. However she felt that the school’s culture, students’ backgrounds, and the principal did not let her apply

multicultural education .She always felt a sense of otherness in the school, and she found the school rules and educational approach very strict.

My beliefs were supporting to teach in a multicultural way, but then may happen in any Islamic school if your views are different than

administrative then you have to modify your teaching according to the administrator or school perspective so it is definitely a disadvantage.

All of the participants stressed the importance of professional development in multicultural education, and highlighted that professional workshops should be provided for Islamic school teachers to improve their understandings of multicultural education and help them learn about how multicultural education–oriented teaching can be applied in Islamic school classrooms.

The interviews showed that multicultural educational contexts in Islamic schools are closely related to the diversity observed in those Islamic schools and their

communities. Cross-case analysis of my research indicated that each school as outlined in each case in this study represented different types of diversities. Therefore, the analysis of school context and Muslim community is critical for finding out the needs of

multicultural education in Islamic schools in the U.S.

To conclude this chapter, I provide Figure 5.2., which summarizes the general findings of all six cases in my research. In the next chapter, the Discussion chapter, I will discuss the findings, implications, and limitations of my research.